Optical fiber connectors are an essential part of optical fiber communication systems, and are used for terminating an optical transmission component such as an optical fiber of a fiber optic cable. Stated another way, optical fiber connectors are widely used for providing a mating/unmating connection point in an optical network, connecting different optical fibers, and terminating optical fibers for optical connection with other devices, such as closures, multiports, optical transmitters, receivers, isolators, attenuators, amplifiers, power meters, and detectors. When terminating a fiber optic cable with a fiber optic connector, the fiber optic cable should be secured to the fiber optic connector in a suitable manner to withstand pulling and side-load forces that may be experienced during installation and use. Moreover, the termination process should be relatively quick, easy and cost-effective.
Fiber optic connectors may be designed for terminating one specific fiber optic cable design and consequently may have difficultly being adapted for terminating other fiber optic cable designs. For instance, fiber optic cable designs may have different cross-sectional shapes, cross-sectional dimensions and/or materials and a fiber optic connector was intended for a specific fiber optic cable design may have difficultly being adapted for other fiber optic cable designs. Further, even the same fiber optic cable design may have manufacturing variations in the outer dimensions that can make terminating the fiber optic cable with a fiber optic connector challenging. Moreover, customers may have a desire to use a specific fiber optic connector for their network, but want to use a fiber optic cable design different from the fiber optic cable that the connector was initially designed to use. Thus, there is an unresolved need for assemblies used for terminating a fiber optic cable with a fiber optic connector using different fiber optic cable designs than the connector was intended to use.